SAN FRANCISCO MORPHED INTO DETROIT SO SLOWLY - How to Boil a Frog

 SAN FRANCISCO MORPHED INTO DETROIT SO SLOWLY, I HARDLY EVEN NOTICED: Spiraling in San Francisco’s Doom Loop. What it’s like to live in a city that no longer believes its problems can be fixed:

A note to my fellow San Franciscians: I’m sorry. I know. There’s always some story in the east-coast press about how our city is dying. San Franciscians hate—HATE—these pieces. You’re a stooge and a traitor for writing one. When I set out reporting, I wanted to write a debunking-the-doom piece myself. Yet to live in San Francisco right now, to watch its streets, is to realize that no one will catch you if you fall. In the first three months of 2023, 200 San Franciscans OD’ed, up 41 percent from last year.“It’s like a wasteland,” the guard said when I asked how San Francisco looked to him. “It’s like the only way to describe it. It’s like a video game — like made-up shit. Have you ever played Fallout?”

I shook my head.

“There’s this thing in the game called feral ghouls, and they’re like rotted. They’re like zombies.” There’s only so much pain a person can take before you disintegrate, grow paranoid, or turn numb. “I go home and play with my wife, and we’re like, ‘Ah, hahahaha, this is SF.’”

As NRO’s Jay Nordlinger wrote in 2010 wrote in 2010 when the original Detroit was making headlines and photo spreads thanks to its Hiroshima-like bombed out landscape, “If people are voting a certain way — maybe it’s because they want to. Maybe they know full well what they’re doing. Sometimes you have to take no — such as ‘no to Republicanism’ — for an answer.”

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Identity Politics: Guilt and the Scapegoat : Disappearance of Middle-Ground

 America is Sick : Fear and Guilt

Identity Politics: Guilt and the Scapegoat | OFFICIAL ESSAY | Dr. Joshua Mitchell

Andrew Klavan Previews Cancel Culture (in2008)

Shut Up 

Andrew Klavan explains Cancel Culture a Decade ago....

ROGER KIMBALL: Are you Having a Free Speech Emergency?

A good barometer of the hysteria was afforded on Bastille Day, when Casey Morrissey, who works at Greenlight Bookstores in Brooklyn, when he (or possibly she) opened a “white box” of promotional books sent round to various independent bookshops by the American Booksellers Association and discovered—horror of horrors—a book whose argument Morrissey disagreed with: Abigail Shrier’s Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters.

* * * * * * * *

The great irony in all of this, as the American Conservative’s Rod Dreher noted in his column on the incident, is that all this hand-wringing and woke demands for censorship coincide with the ABA announcement of this year’s “Banned Books Week.” A press release, written in tones of great moral self-satisfaction, declares that the event (like the ABA itself, of course) “celebrates the freedom to read by encouraging readouts, bookstore displays, and community activities designed to raise awareness of the ongoing threat of censorship. . . . The 2021 theme [“Books Unite Us, Censorship Divides Us”] is intended to be inclusive, emphasizing the ways in which books and information bring people together, help individuals see themselves in the stories of others, and aid the development of empathy and understanding for people from other backgrounds.”

Unless, of course, your book happens to argue for something that hasn’t passed muster with this week’s star chamber in charge of deciding what opinions are OK and what must be ignored, censored, or oppressed. An accompanying graphic invites readers, should they encounter “a free speech emergency,” to contact someone from the American Booksellers for Free Expression to commiserate.

There is a “free speech emergency” in the United States circa 2021. The pretend-anguished cries of sexual exotics are only part of the story. Even as this tale of fake woe was circulating, Jen Psaki, press secretary to Joe Biden, titular president of the United States, informed the White House propaganda committee that “We’re flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation.” Why? So Facebook can exercise its power to keep Americans in line and on message when it comes to any subject the junta decides the plebs need to be at one about. And who decides what counts as “disinformation”? Shut up.

For the left, that’s what it ultimately comes down to:

Earlier: ABA: We’re Book Banners — But For The Left.

Related: Abigail Shrier: The Books Are Already Burning.

25Posted at 1:14 pm by Ed Driscoll   

The Man They Couldn’t Cancel - Jorden Peterson

 JORDAN PETERSON, 

The Man They Couldn’t Cancel: Mobs have targeted Jordan Peterson, but he hasn’t lost his university job and his publishers have stuck by him. What’s his secret?

Since then he has been denounced as racist, misogynist, fascist and transphobic. Occasionally violent protests against him have taken place on the University of Toronto campus, and he is regularly shouted down at speaking events. When Penguin Random House Canada announced that it would publish “Beyond Order,” its staff “confronted management,” according to media reports, in a tearful town-hall meeting.

Contempt for the “working class” by North America’s “liberal educated elite,” is a major reason for his popularity, he says. “There aren’t very many people with an encouraging voice,” Mr. Peterson says. “Most of the things you read by intellectuals—not all, but it’s a failing of intellectuals—most of it is criticism. Look what you’re doing to the planet. What a detestable bunch of wretches you are, with your rapacious structures and your endless appetite and your desire for power. . . . Look at what your ambition has done to the planet. How dare you!”

Mr. Peterson doesn’t directly challenge the substance of these dreary criticisms. Rather he protests that they’re unnatural and unhealthy. “The proper attitude toward young people is encouragement,” he says—“their ambitions, their strivings, their desire to be competent, their deep wish for a trustworthy guiding hand. I think our culture is so cynical that it’s impossible, especially for the established intellectual chattering critics, to even imagine that encouragement is possible.” . . .

In the end, Mr. Peterson hasn’t been successfully canceled. He retains his academic post; his YouTube lectures and podcasts have not been scrubbed from the internet; and his publishers stuck with his books, which are available for purchase. This is true for basically two reasons. The first is that he has tried to understand his would-be cancelers and thinks of them almost as outpatients. He speaks in gentle, clinical terms about a reporter for the New York Times who in 2018 wrote a scathing piece about him headlined “Jordan Peterson, Custodian of the Patriarchy” and later posted online what sounded like a confession (“The roar of Twitter on my side meant the kill was justified and good”). He has, as best I can tell, genuine pity for this writer.

The second reason follows from the first. The cancelers’ strange fixations mean that apologizing to them is folly. Mr. Peterson hasn’t apologized or disavowed any previous statement. Now there’s a rule for his next book: Don’t apologize when you haven’t done anything wrong.

In the words of the great Andrew Breitart: Apologize for what?

Related: How to beat the woke: Never apologize, rally friends and punch back harder. “University and corporate bosses give into the woke because it’s painless and easier than fighting them. Make it painful and difficult instead, and they’ll change their ways. Take this to heart. The sane can win.”

116Posted at 7:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds   

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Optimism Inc' VDH

VDHanson on Current Culture

Optimism Inc. Part 1

Optimism Inc. Part 2

Optimism Inc. Part 3

Radical New Rules for Post-America -- VDH

 Radical New Rules for Post-America

Radical New Rules for
Post-America

Americans privately fear these rules, while publicly appearing to accept them.

1) Money is a construct.

2) Laws are not necessarily binding anymore. 

3) Racialism is now acceptable.

4) The immigrant is mostly preferable to the citizen.

5) Most Americans should be treated as we would treat little children.

6) Hypocrisy is passé. Virtue-signaling is alive.

7) Ignoring or perpetuating homelessness is preferable to ending it.

8) McCarthyism is good.

9) Ignorance is preferable to knowledge

10) Wokeness is the new religion, growing faster and larger than Christianity itself. 

9) Ignorance is preferable to knowledge.

Systemic Racism - the Big Lie

 

The Naked Dollar

Comments from finance/tech guy turned novelist. Author of best seller Campusland. Follow on Twitter: @SJohnston60.

Wednesday, March 3, 2021

Systemic Racism - the Big Lie

So, why do we say systemic racism, and not just racism? Why systemic?

It's important to understand the words and phrases that so thoroughly penetrate our national discourse, because most people don't.

Systemic racism is not about specific instances of racism. Rather, it is the belief that racism is imbued in our national DNA, in our system. It looks to broad, racial outcomes as evidence. Any disparity in result is a priori proof of systemic racism.

Ibram X. Kendi himself, the man at the very pinnacle of the "Anti-racism" power structure, says, "Racial discrimination is the sole cause of racial disparities in this country."

The sole cause. Nothing else. Not fatherless homes. Not personal choices. Not school quality, or culture, or even luck.

As long as racial groups perform differently, there must be racism. Systemic racism.

If our system is racist, then we must ask, what does our system consist of? The answer to that is institutions, of course. The government, corporations, schools, foundations...

And this is where I have a real problem with the whole thing. But first, let's be clear, there was a time in our country where most of our institutions were racist. You don't even have to go back too far in our history; certainly within my lifetime. (Note: I'm primarily addressing racism against blacks here, because that's what Critical Race Theory and "Anti-racism" deal with. I'm perfectly aware you could make a systemic racism argument today where "white-adjacent" groups are concerned, i.e. Asians and Indian-Americans.)

But matters have changed radically in the last few decades. I am unaware of any institutions that don't give special preferences to blacks. Many significantly so. 

Everyone knows this, but it's a truth you can't speak, particularly if you rely on someone else for your paycheck.

Whether you think such preferences are the right thing to do is a discussion for a different day. But it's an unarguable fact that preferences are given.

The government and public schools certainly do. 

Universities certainly do. The average SAT scores for black students at places like Harvard is several hundred points lower than other students.

Corporations certainly do. In fact, they are desperate to hire more black candidates, and are often frustrated in their efforts to do so. Same goes for finding board members. The CEO of Wells Fargo, Charles Scharf, got in hot water recently when he said, "The unfortunate reality is that there is a very limited pool of black talent to recruit from."

Does he have a point, or was he being racist? Blacks are 12% of the population, but they are only 7% of the pool of college graduates. How is Scharf supposed to get to 12%? I suppose he could, but then other banks would be left woefully short in this zero-sum game. 

Here's the rub: representation of less than 12% is viewed by the Ibram X. Kendis of the world as case-closed proof of racism. Similarly, if a neighborhood is less than 12% black, it must be because of racism.

No further evidence required.

Remember, this is all about group results, not individuals.

(Aside: that blacks are underrepresented as college grads is worthy of serious discussion, even if it's not something Scharf can solve as CEO of a bank. The problem is that you can't get to the heart of the issue without discussing the absence of black fathers or the failure of teachers unions to actually teach, and those are places you are not allowed to go.)

Systemic racism is the Big Lie because our institutions are not racist. They actually have become the opposite, seeking absolution for past sins.

But we will never get to racial nirvana if we measure everything by groups. Groups will always perform differently, and for many reasons. This is a convenient state of affairs for DEI race hustlers because it means that systemic racism will always exist. The revolution is permanent, and unless you want it to come for you, you'd better shell out for a DEI consultant and get that seal of approval. (For as long as your checks clear, anyway.)

As a conservative, I believe that individuals have rights, not groups. If there are acts of racism against individuals, I want to know about it, because it goes against everything I believe. 

But notice I said acts. 

If a person is guilty of acts of racism, let's call him out, even prosecute him if laws have been broken. 

If an institution is committing acts of racism, same thing. Shame on them, and there are multiple paths for remediation.

We conservatives want to solve problems.

The DEI movement does not. That's why the very definition of racism gets ever-more-nebulous. Now we have "microaggressions" and "unconscious bias," which can be so subtle that neither the victim nor the perpetrator knows they're happening. Then there's "cultural appropriation," of course (without which we wouldn't have the Beatles - just sayin'). 

There's an endless word salad of new, ever-more-nuanced transgressions. Every day there's something else. Just yesterday, I learned the word misogynoir. (That means bias against black women, in case your Oxford English Dictionary hasn't been updated in the last 24 hours.)

But solving the problem of race means the Great Race Hustle goes away, so true solutions must always be another DEI training session out-of-reach.

Thus, racism is in the air we breathe and the water we drink. It's in a look or a glance, or the food we choose to cook. It's in the Classics, and Twain, and To Kill a Mockingbird. 

Even poor Dr. Seuss. 

Oh, the things you can't do!

The Miseducation of America’s Elites - Bari Weiss

 Home Schooling - Looking Better and Better

BARI WEISS: 

The Miseducation of America’s Elites. 

Affluent parents, terrified of running afoul of the new orthodoxy in their children’s private schools, organize in secret.

One private school parent, born in a Communist nation, tells me: “I came to this country escaping the very same fear of retaliation that now my own child feels.” Another joked: “We need to feed our families. Oh, and pay $50,000 a year to have our children get indoctrinated.” A teacher in New York City put it most concisely: “To speak against this is to put all of your moral capital at risk.”

Home schooling looks better and better.

134Posted at 5:41 pm by John Tierney   

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Ucle Joe Cancels Dr Seuss

 Biden Erases Dr Seuss (Canceled)

Uncle Joe ( as in Stalin )